He wasn't going to play Seager at all today. That left only Hedges on the bench when Josh Smith came up.
Where was Miller?
In fairness, few teams do. If your team loses 3 All-Star bats, you’re gonna see a drop off no matter what you do. But that’s why I was critical of the decision to essentially punt the game today. If Seager did need to miss the game for injury maintenance, then I would have rather seen Bochy put forth the “best of the rest” to give us a better chance to win, percentage-wise. Sure, Josh Smith ended up with a better day at the plate than Adolis. But in general, playing a lineup with that many spares is only going to further kill your chances. Maybe I’m just higher on Garver than some. But I see him as at least an average to better than average MLB hitter with a fair amount of pop. With so many stars out, he almost needs to play every day either at C or DH. The other choices are statistically much less likely to succeed.
He is on the DL.
Yeah, I don’t blame him for not lifting Smith for that at-bat. His hands were 100% tied at that point. Hedges is even worse with the bat than Smith.
With Garver playing a lot of catcher now, it wasn't that surprising that he didn't play. Bochy likes giving guys a day off before an off day.
I can agree that Garver at least DH. That is not going to exactly wear someone out.
As a DH, Garver has been a completely different hitter this year. He is hitting .219 with an OPS of .609 when he is the DH.
Can’t depend on other teams we need to win games like today’s where we’re way better than the A’s. The announcers kept making excuses like it’s the opener-type game just overwhelmed our batters but that wasn’t it
He has been on the upswing lately so just based on that he needed to be in there. I felt at some point that Taveras and Duran would struggle through the course of a long season. Duran did drive in the 1st run last night and Taveras has been keeping his average in the 270's. Duran just isn't hitting the ball with the authority I am used to seeing from him. Of course I hope he gets it back. Not sure what is being done behind the scenes to help these guys.
From what I've seen is pitchers have figured Duran out and it shows. Throw him low sliders and it's all over.
Good point
Taveras isn't really keeping his average there as much as it has been falling and was currently there. In fact, after today, it is at .269. It has dropped 26 points since the break.
That was my point earlier. Bochy basically wrote this game off before it started
